Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 5 of 86

By midday Zach knew the song had failed them. He and Raven stood where the forest thinned into rocky flats. The rhyme said follow the dead river north. But three paths cut through the rocks, and each looked dead the same way. Zach turned in a slow circle. "Sing it again," he said. "There has to be a marker." Raven, the princess who had left her father's tree to walk beside him, hummed the verse under her breath. Her cat ears turned as if hunting the words. "North where the three-eyed things crawl," she said. "That's not a marker. That's a warning." She kicked a loose stone down the middle path. It bounced and vanished into a crack. "The song was made for children, not for feet. We'll wander until the monsters find us." Zach's chest tightened. He had a direction and still no way to walk it. "Then the song isn't enough," he said. "We need someone who's seen these roads." Raven went quiet. Then she looked north, past the flats, and her jaw set. "There's a city that way. Tyr Alys. A big walled place." She said the name like it cost her. "Merchants there sell maps of every dead road. If anyone charted the way to the river, it's someone behind those walls." "You don't like it," Zach said. "I don't." She met his eyes. "The clean streets are fine. It's the dark alleys. People whisper about a cult there. Dark sorcerers." She paused. "The kind who deal in the dead coming back. In power that grows where it shouldn't." Zach felt the words land. His strength had climbed since he pulled the sword. He had told no one how strong his arms had grown, how the blade weighed less each day. "You think they know something about me," he said. "I think a man pulled across worlds and marked as chosen should ask questions where the answers are ugly," Raven said. "Maps and secrets. Both are in that city." They walked until the walls rose gray against the sky. Guards at the gate eyed the sword on Zach's back. Raven pulled the King's cloak over it and spoke to them low. A coin changed hands. The gate groaned open. Inside, Zach found a map seller under an awning. The man had wares spread on a cloth. Zach asked for the road to the dead river. The seller's face changed. He rolled his maps tight and shook his head. "That road's not for sale," he muttered. "Ask in the low quarter. Ask the ones who don't want to be found." He jabbed a thumb toward a black mouth of an alley. Zach stared down it. He had come for a route north. Now the route ran straight through the very people Raven feared. He had traded a vague song for a real path. The path pointed into the dark. "That way, then," he said. Raven's hand dropped to her belt. Together they stepped into the alley.